More than $40 million in state bond funds headed to Mendocino County this summer will help create “lots of jobs,” said Art Harwood, executive director of the Redwood Forest Foundation Inc.
While RFFI is still preparing for its first timber harvest, another logging-preservation nonprofit, The Conversation Fund, is already creating jobs in the three big forests it owns along Big River, Salmon Creek and the Garcia River.
Two easement purchases, covering about 4 percent of the land area of Mendocino County are currently in the works, part of a major shift in the local lumber business away from market-based logging by large timber companies to subsidized sustainable harvesting led by nonprofit groups.
Last month, the Wildlife Conservation Board approved $19.5 million in Proposition 84 funds to purchase a restrictive conservation easement from RFFI for most of the 50,000 acres of the Usal Forest.
That property is west of Leggett, north of Westport and mostly east of the Lost Coast. The deal was expected to close by Sept. 30, said Harwood. RFFI also sold 950 acres to Save the Redwood League for $5.5 million. That purchase will create a new coastal preserve and add 1.5 miles to The California Coastal Trail near Usal Beach.
The $25 million will help RFFI make a substantial payment on the $65 million loan it used to acquire the USAL property. The rest relies on logging for repayment.
On Sept. 13, another large swath, which touches the Sonoma County border, is proposed for protection with conservation easements. The state WCB will be asked to pay $19 million to Coastal Ridges LLC, a timber company, to acquire a 14,000 acre conservation easement.
At the heart of both deals is The Conservation Fund, which will be charged with maintaining the conditions of both of the new easements, as well as its own 40,000 acres of forests along Big River, Salmon Creek and the Garcia River.
Overwhelmingly, local city, county, state, business and environmental leaders say these purchases represent a turning of the corner for both the local economy and the environment.
The Wildlife Conservation Board has been bombarded with hundreds of letters in support of the easement purchases, thanks in part to social media get out the message efforts by environmental organizations.
Only one opponent has spoken out, the Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), which, along with Campbell Timberland Management, are among the largest private property owners in the county. In statements on its website and to the press, MRC has claimed taxpayers shouldn”t be paying to preserve land that MRC said isn”t really threatened by development.
Chris Kelly, California Program Director of The Conservation Fund, says a plan by Preservation Ranch to clearcut 2,000 acres and plant vineyard on a neighboring parcel to the south county purchase refutes that contention. He also cites other plans to subdivide nearby forests.
Harwood said much of the RFFI lands are accessible to either Highway 1 or Highway 101, have good water supplies and are desirable to developers and farmers. He also names developments proposed on adjacent lands.
Prior to the easement, the Usal forest easement could legally have been split into 309 separate parcels. The easement demands the huge tract not be divided at all.
Harwood”s family have long been prominent in the timber industry. The Harwood Lumber Mill in Branscomb was an important coast employer until efforts to save it failed in 2007, resulting in closure and bankruptcy. Wells Fargo Bank sold the mill off in pieces, which Harwood says was a mistake.
“It is really a shame our mill got dismantled. The minute this economy turns around there will be a huge shortage of sawmills in the redwood region,” said Harwood.
Lumber history is renowned for its booms and busts, one of the economic reasons for destructive, unsustainable cutting when housing booms push lumber and pulp prices skyward. Logging history is also filled with mills opening and closing. The economic slump of the past four years has resulted in an unprecedented shrinkage of mill capacity nationwide, according to online business publications.
The easements aim to create sustainable forests where trees are not all the same age — one of the most damaging elements of legacy logging. Deed restrictions that limit the size of the harvest and prohibit practices such as clear cutting — unless being done to clear the brush that now covers much of the once productive forestlands.
Harwood believes these practices will eventually result in both healthier forests and more dependable local jobs, rather than companies and mills that come and go.
“This forest is going to produce jobs, lots of jobs, which will be coming in all the forests. If you make the practices sustainable, the jobs will go beyond mill and timber jobs. A sustainable forest will produce a much wider variety of job, for example jobs hunting mushrooms. A sustainable forest will help restore the fisheries jobs and create increased tourism,” said Harwood.
“Usal Forest includes 17 miles of Eel River frontage,” said Harwood.
Public access is in the plans for the future, but lots of restoration is the first priority. Although timber harvests are planned annually, the healthy, vibrant job sustaining forest Harwood speaks of is 25-50 years away.
In fact, any landowner wishing to harvest must now spend as much repairing the land from past injuries as in harvesting second-growth timber. MRC and other timber companies employ teams of biologists and restoration experts just like the nonprofits.
Kelly says the difference is not so much in the amount of restoration being done, but in the smaller size of timber harvests. The easements restrict certain practices, limiting the take and require at least 20 percent of the forest be free of logging each year.
But many areas of local forest can”t be logged anyway.
Roads in many areas are unusable and present restoration emergencies. Entire hillsides must be secured. Areas once clearcut often have few valuable trees, choked with invasive species and hardwoods.
“We are all dealing with the legacy of largely unregulated logging that went on for a century, through the middle 1970s,” Kelly said.
The Conservation Fund and RFFI have sought different strategies for their properties. The Conservation Fund hasn”t sought conservation easements on its Big River and Salmon Creek, purchased with deed restrictions that serve the same purpose. But many more agencies and grants were involved in those deals.
The Conservation Fund has also sold carbon credits to PG&E, a source of funding which so far RFFI has not pursued.
After objections to the appraisal process by MRC, the WCB delayed the purchase and conducted an independent appraisal review for both easement purchases. Each review gave a clean bill to move forward and can be seen on the Wildlife Conservation Board”s website.
“Overall, the appraisal satisfactorily complies with the minimum requirements of the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practices, wrote. Appraiser Richard A. Murphy, in his review of the Gualala area easement purchase, estimated the property was worth $30 million, but only 7.76 million after the easement, and thus the easement value was $22.24 million.
Critics, such as John Hansen of Integrity in Natural Resources, say the appraisal methodology used is both novel and in violation of law and opens the door for abuse of public funds by private entities.
Like timber companies, these nonprofits must harvest to make the bottom line. What if the economy doesn”t turn around?
“There is an old saying in the lumber business. If you are not an optimist you better be in some other business,” Harwood said.
